Millennium Development Goals - part 1

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) came to an end in 2015. There was a hope globally that poverty and other issues would be alleviated. Despite the MDG's achieving many of its aims it fell short on water and sanitation, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. As the Millennium Development Goals is a large topic, I will divide my discussion across two blog posts. This week's blog will be focusing on what the MDGs aimed to do with water and sanitation, and why. Next week's blog will focus on what happened. I will then also begin to discuss possible reasons as to why advances in water and sanitation were unsuccessful in Sub-Saharan Africa. 

The United Nations Millennium Development Goals consisted of 8 goals which were designed to be achieved by all countries worldwide. Figure 1 below illustrates the 8 goals. 

Figure 1

Source:

http://un.dk/about-the-un/the-mdgs 

In 2015 the United Nations summarised all that the Millennium Development Goals had achieved in a report. Below I have bullet-pointed a handful of the Millennium Development Goal's greatest successes:

• The number of people living in extreme poverty declined more than half, from 1.9 billion in 1990 to 836 million in 2015.
• Worldwide maternal mortality has fallen by 45% since 1990.
• Gender parity in a majority of countries has been achieved at primary school level. 
• 2.1 billion people worldwide gained access to improved sanitation 
• And finally, 147 countries met the MDG target for the drinking water target, 95 countries met the target for improved sanitation, and 77 countries were able to meet both targets. 

Whilst I could dedicate an entire blog to the Millennium Development Goals, this blog is focusing on water and sanitation in Africa. Therefore, the Millennium Development Goal which is of most use to this blog is MDG 7, 'Ensure Environmental Sustainability'. 

MDG 7, Ensure Environmental Sustainability, was governed by four main targets:

• Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes and reverse the loss of environmental resources.
• Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss.
• Halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.
• By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers.

The MDG's recognised the importance of clean and safe water as a vital component of health care, considering it to be one of the most critical instruments in saving lives (Mabugu, 2008). MDG 7 highlighted that water is a fundamental part of human life, a basic human right, this resulted in the MDGs working to increase the number of people with access to an improved water supply and an improved sanitation supply (Mabugu, 2008). This involved creating guidelines on what was suitable water for safe consumption and also resulted in the creation of information networks, which spread knowledge about how people can treat and store water safely and effectively (World Health Organisation, 2013). The Millennium Development Goals helped put water and sanitation on the development agenda (Anand, 2008).

In 1990 the percentage of the population with access to an improved drinking water source was 76%, by 2015 it had increased to 91%, this was above the MDG target, which was reached in 2010 (Figure 2). The MDGs was a great success in ensuring the provision of improved water sources globally, unfortunately, these statistics only represent a worldwide scale, there are still significant geographical differences in results (Anand, 2008). In 1990, 48% of the Sub-Saharan African population had access to improved drinking water sources, and by 2015 this had risen to 68%, falling under the MDG target of 75% for the region (Figure 2). Unfortunately, sanitation globally and in Sub-Saharan Africa has performed worse. 

Figure 2 

Source:  http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/2015_MDG_Report/pdf/MDG%202015%20rev%20(July%201).pdf 

In 1990 the percentage of the population with access to an improved sanitation facility was 54%, this later increased to 68% in 2015 (Figure 3). However, there were still 2.4 billion people worldwide without adequate sanitation, meaning the world did not meet the MDG target for sanitation (United Nations, 2015). When looking at statistics for Sub-Saharan Africa the reality becomes bleaker. In 1990 only 24% of Sub-Saharan Africans had access to an improved sanitation source, and by 2015 this had only increased to a measly 30%, well below the 2015 target of 65% (Figure 3). 

Figure 3 

Source:

http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/2015_MDG_Report/pdf/MDG%202015%20rev%20(July%201).pdf 

The Millennium Development Goals were supposed to help reduce global poverty, but have been very poor in providing results for water and sanitation in Sub-Saharan Africa. Next week's blog will be looking at what went wrong, and why Sub-Saharan Africa lagged behind so many other regions.